Former jurists continue fight for pensions

Two former Luzerne County judges, one fresh out of prison and the other resuming private legal practice after her removal from the bench for ethics violations, continue to fight for their state pensions, which together could be worth more than $1 million.

Former judges Michael T. Toole and Ann H. Lokuta claim the State Employees' Retirement System illegally terminated their pension rights, according to documents acquired under the state open records law.

Toole, 52, was recently transferred to a halfway house after serving 19 months in a federal prison in Minnesota for accepting free use of a beach house from an attorney who won a favorable ruling in his court and failing to pay taxes on a $30,000 finder's fee he received from another attorney.

Lokuta, 58, was removed from office in 2008 by the state Court of Judicial Discipline, which found she repeatedly arrived late for court, mistreated attorneys and court staffers, used court employees to perform personal chores and decided a case in favor of a family that had supported her politically.

The Retirement System ruled the former judges forfeited their pension rights through their actions, but were entitled to the money they had contributed to the system plus interest - $274,904 for Lokuta and $115,050 for Toole.

Both appealed the rulings, seeking hearings before a Retirement System hearing officer, but the proceedings have been delayed, in Lokuta's case by her legal challenge to her removal from office, which ended in October 2011 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused her take her appeal. Toole asked the retirement system to delay his hearing until his release from federal custody.

Lokuta's hearing is now scheduled for Jan. 4 in Harrisburg.

In a telephone interview last week, Lokuta, who has returned to private practice, said she will challenge the termination of her pension rights on the grounds that her removal from office was orchestrated by two other county judges who testified against her before the discipline court and are now serving lengthy prison terms for racketeering.

Lokuta said those judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, wanted to retaliate against her for giving information to federal prosecutors who eventually charged the pair with taking kickbacks for placing juveniles in two for-profit detention centers.

"I've done nothing criminally wrong," Lokuta said. "The thing I did was challenge the system. I think that I got hosed."

Lokuta estimated her pension benefits after 17 years in office would be worth between $800,000 and $1 million.

Toole is challenging the denial of his pension benefits on the grounds that his crimes "involved nonjudicial acts" and that the denial was incorrectly based on a July 2011 order from the Court of Judicial Discipline removing him from office. That order was "moot" because he had resigned from the bench on Jan. 8, 2009, just days after being charged, Toole argued in filings with the retirement system that he drafted himself.

"The sanctions imposed by the Court of Judicial Discipline in its Order, dated July 26, 2011, were unlawful," Toole wrote. "The Retirement Board cannot rely on the sanctions improperly imposed, by the Court of Judicial Discipline."

The potential value of Toole's pension, if restored, was not included in the documents obtained by The Citizens' Voice.

Toole, a county judge from 2004 through 2008, is scheduled to be released from federal custody in May. A hearing on his pension appeal has yet to be scheduled. Efforts to reach him for comment were not successful.

Toole was recently transferred to a halfway house under the jurisdiction of a U.S. Bureau of Prisons office in Philadelphia that oversees facilities in Eastern Pennsylvania and several New England states.

A bureau spokesman said halfway-house assignments are not made public without the approval of the inmate and Toole denied a Citizens' Voice request for disclosure of his whereabouts.

But in filings with the retirement system, Toole wrote that he expected to be placed in a halfway house in Pennsylvania.

The halfway house for federal inmates closest to Toole's Wilkes-Barre home is operated by Catholic Social Services in Scranton. Staffers there would not say if Toole is a resident.

djanoski@citizensvoice.com, 570-301-2178

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